Sept. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Albuquerque may wind up with the
nation’s first local ban on some abortions after activists
collected enough signatures to put the issue before voters in
New Mexico’s largest city.

The move to circumvent the Democrats who run the state
legislature and target a clinic in the city comes as abortion
foes have racked up unprecedented statehouse victories.
Opponents have begun to take their fight to city halls by
pushing measures to impose new limits and, if they succeed in
Albuquerque, may expand their use of the tactics, said Cheryl
Sullenger, senior policy adviser at Operation Rescue.

“We will take it to the local level if that is what we
need to do,” said Sullenger, whose Wichita-based group opposes
abortion. “Let’s zone them out. Let’s take any opportunity
available to us.”

The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Ordinance proposed
in Albuquerque would impose a citywide ban on terminating
pregnancies after 20 weeks, similar to laws passed in at least
10 states since 2010, including Arizona and Texas. A court
struck down the Arizona law while other states have put the new
rules on hold pending court review. Attempts to pass such limits
have been stymied in the New Mexico legislature, said Tara
Shaver, the ballot initiative campaign organizer in Albuquerque.

Local Strategy

“What else can we do to save women and children from
abortion?” said Shaver, 29, who is also a spokeswoman for
Project Defending Life, a Catholic group in the city that
opposes the procedure.

Shaver relocated with her husband to New Mexico in 2010 to
be “pro-life missionaries” after interning at Operation
Rescue. “We thought, let’s see what we can do at the city
level,” she said.

Abortion foes already have used zoning changes and other
municipal tactics to close clinics elsewhere in the country. In
July, Virginia’s busiest provider of the service closed after
changes in state and local rules, said Tarina Keene, executive
director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, a reproductive-rights
advocacy group based outside Washington in Alexandria.

NOVA Women’s Healthcare, a clinic that performed more than
3,000 abortions last year, sought to relocate within Fairfax, a
Washington suburb, after its landlord sued in part because of
protests by anti-abortion groups, Keene said.

More Rules

After identifying a building on Main Street that could meet
new state clinic requirements slated to take effect next year,
Fairfax rejected its application in May, citing insufficient
parking, Keene said. In July, the City Council passed rules
reclassifying clinics as medical-care facilities, requiring a
$4,800 special-use permit and council approval.

“They were hit on all sides from a policy standpoint and,
unfortunately, the women’s health facility was not able to
overcome the obstacles that these politicians put in their way
to remain open and offer services to their patients,” Keene
said, adding that the facility also provided birth control,
cancer screenings and other health services to women.

Similar restrictions were put in place in Virginia’s
Stafford County, blocking clinics from opening there, Keene
said. The county is about halfway between Washington and
Richmond, the state capital.

“This is definitely a new tactic that the anti-choice side
of this debate is taking,” Keene said. “You can target where
these facilities are located at the county, city or town
level.”

Wichita Clinic

That’s the strategy now being pursued in Wichita, Kansas,
where protesters try to intercept patients on a daily basis to
stop abortions at a clinic in the building where murdered doctor
George Tiller, a provider of the service, once practiced. The
killer said he did it to save unborn babies, according to
accounts of his trial.

Mark Gietzen, director of the Kansas Coalition for Life,
the local group that fields the protesters, said he and other
activists are pushing the planning commission and the Wichita
City Council to rezone the area where the clinic, the South Wind
Women’s Center, is located. They contend that potential for
violence there poses a risk to the surrounding residential
neighborhood, he said.

“We wouldn’t shed any tears if they weren’t able to open
elsewhere,” he said by telephone, speaking as he stood outside
the clinic handing anti-abortion literature to patients as they
went into the building.

Late-Term Abortions

In Albuquerque, a city of about 555,000, the proposed ban
targets Southwestern Women’s Options, which performs abortions
after 25 weeks gestation and works with women who discover fetal
abnormalities, according to its website.

Operation Rescue calls it the “largest late-term abortion
clinic in the U.S.” and says it draws women from across the
country. A spokeswoman didn’t respond immediately to a telephone
message seeking comment yesterday.

Shaver and her campaign collected almost 27,000 voter
signatures in 20 days -- more than twice the number needed -- to
put the proposed ban before voters, she said. The city clerk’s
office certified that they had the required 12,091 valid
signatures last week and the City Council now must set a date
for the vote.

Council President Dan Lewis, a Republican, said he’ll
recommend a mail-in election on Nov. 19, in a memo to fellow
council members. If a run-off vote for city offices is needed,
it could take place on that date, Lewis said. A separate special
election would cost about $600,000, said City Clerk Amy Bailey.

Legal Costs

If voters pass the measure, it will wind up costing the
city and taxpayers even more, said Alexandra Smith, a lawyer
with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which has
joined with other groups to form the Respect ABQ Women campaign
to oppose the measure. Her organization will sue because the ban
would be an unconstitutional limit to the right to an abortion
guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court, she said.

“We believe it is very important that women have the
ability to make these complicated personal decisions, and they
should be making these decisions with their doctors,” she said.
“It is not a decision that should be decided by anyone else.”